We cannot build a backdoor that only works for a particular type of government, or only in the presence of a particular court order.

This is the person that coined the phrase “security theater” and he isn’t in the habit of making up unlikely stories to scare us. He is, however, very good at understanding real risks to security for people, businesses, and countries.

I reached 10,000 miles on my Nissan LEAF this past Sunday evening. It’s probably a lot less than normal driving for about 22 months, but just goes to show that an ev is a perfect fit for me. I just don’t really drive that far.

Hit 10,000 miles in my LEAF while driving to pick up Chipotle, which was a highly likely circumstance knowing our family.

I’m currently reading The Mote in God’s Eye and I really enjoyed this image of an engineer by SebasP. The book describes the first engineer as being like a cartoon with a permanent smile. This seems perfect.

Out of nowhere, I got into the mood to listen some Amy Winehouse this afternoon. It struck me as a real shame she never got to record a Bond theme, among the many disappointments of losing her. Winehouse just had the perfect sultry, throwback voice for a Bond film intro. I realize that it was ‘attempted’ and, honestly, having a duet by Alishia Keys & Jack White is a pretty good consolation. “Another Way to Die” is a great song, but I can’t help but wonder what could have been…

Over Memorial Day weekend in 1999, Angela, her cousin, Jonathan, and I went to the Star Trek Convention at the Cumberland Science Museum to see James Doohan, who played engineer Montgomery Scott on Star Trek. Jonathan brought along cards for us all to get signed. Almost 15 years later, I managed to find mine.

After three years without a single reported case of polio, India was declared free of polio. It’s been so long since polio was a epidemic in the United States &emdash;which goes a long to way to explaining our current anti-vaccination and anti-science culture&emdash; that is hard to grasp how monumental this news is for so many people. The BBC reports that there are only three countries left where polio is endemic: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Wired recently had an excellent long-form piece on the effort to eradicate polio from the planet.

[Greg] Bentley credited the rapid proliferation and repurposing of consumer products, such as the iPad, into wirelessly connected field tools for construction as accelerants to the development of new processes for the collection and exchange of project and asset information. He says it is a “tremendous” moment for software developers, who no longer have to struggle to find hardware capable of supporting innovations. “Thank goodness we don’t have to invent it, just take advantage of it,” he said.

Bentley doesn’t make any hardware and their acquisitions that once did (such as Intergraph) now exclusively support third-party hardware. Taking advantage of hardware on third-party devices to move them into new and creative markets benefits everyone in that three-party arrangement. (via Rick Stavanja)

I have read numerous times how Gene Roddenberry—the creator of Star Trek—preferred the eyes and mouth of an actor playing some alien not be obscured by makeup. The theory goes that this allows the actor to actually, well, act and the audience better empathize with the character. This makes good sense on a series like Star Trek, where the interaction with aliens is often less shoot ’em up and more diplomacy and moral drama. However, I had never considered this point extending to dogs.